Milos beaches: Tsigrado

Tsigrado is definitely one of my favorite beaches on Milos.  It's something of an adventure to get down to the beach, so it's not for everyone.  But if you can handle some light, rope assisted rock climbing, it's a very cool beach.  It's surrounded by (not very high) rock cliffs on three sides (which is what you have to climb down/up) and if you swim out a bit there are several caves in the cliffs to check out.  Here's the view from above.

 And from the water looking back toward the beach.

It's not a very big beach, so it could get crowded, but I think the climb keeps the crowds away.  If you look a bit left of center on the cliffs, you can see the channel carved in the rock that makes the climb down relatively easy.  You can also see the ladder at the bottom.  But let's take a closer look at the whole trip down.  Here's the entrance to the channel you climb down seen from the top of climb.

You can see the metal spike to the left with a rope attached to help with the climb back out.  It looks maybe a little intimidating there, but it's really just a small (3-4 foot drop) to a moderate incline that's pretty easy to climb up and down.  Here's the bottom of that incline, looking out at the beach.

And from here you step down onto the ladder to the beach.

Adventure complete.  It's really pretty easy.  There were lots of small children making the climb.  I would recommend bringing a backpack to this beach though.  Otherwise getting your beach gear in and out is a hassle.  I had full pockets, a snorkel mask and towel around my neck and the snorkel in my teeth.  That makes for an annoying climb.

But once you get down it's totally worth the trouble.  It's a beautiful beach with lots of rocks and fish for your snorkeling pleasure.  I'd say Tsigrado is second only to Paleochori for quality snorkeling on Milos.  And then there are the caves.  This is the closest one, just a few feet in from the shore.

Here's a picture of the left side of the beach from the shore.

At the far left, that little black slit at the bottom of the rocks is the entrance to the first cave pictured above.  Farther to the right, you see another dark triangle where the rocks meet the water.  That is the entrance to this cool rock formation.

It's sort of like a cave except you can swim in one end and out the other.

The remaining two caves (that we found) were farther out.  One is about 50 meters out from the beach on the left, the other slightly farther out and on the right.  I didn't have the strength to swim all that way with one hand holding the camera above water, so there are no pictures of those two caves. They were both really amazing though.  I highly recommend a snorkel and waterproof camera to make the most of them, but even without, the caves are well worth the swim. 

According to the owner of the hotel we stayed in, there's another cave even farther out somewhere.  (You'll have to ask locals about this; I didn't find out.)  And if you go through this cave it exits out onto another beach.  Sounds fantastic, but again, I'm not completely sure it exists.